70 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 
composed of five bundles of fertile stamens superposed to the sepals 
and five staminodes in the form of oppositipetalous petaloid tongues. 
All these elements are generally united below for a variable distance 
into a monadelphous urceolate tube. The bundles of fertile stamens 
are occasionally formed of two, but more frequently of three, or four, 
rarely of five, or a greater number of unequal branches,’ each bearing 
a two-celled extrorse anther, dehiscing by two longitudinal clefts. The 
Dombeya angulata, 

FI@. 100, 
Longitudinal section of flower (2). 
Fra. 98. 
Inflorescence. 
Fie. 99. 
Flower. 
gynæceum is free, formed of an ovary with five alternipetalous cells, 
and more rarely of a smaller number of cells, surmounted by a style 
more or less deeply divided into a similar number of branches stigma- 
tiferous above and within. In the internal angle of each cell is found a 
placenta supporting two collateral or almost super- 
posed and ascending ovules (fig. 100), with micropyle 
looking downwards and outwards. The fruit isa locu- 
licidal capsule, formed of from two to five mono- or 
di-spermous cells ; and the seeds contain under their 
Dombeya (Assonia) 
populnea. 
coats a fleshy albumen enveloping an embryo more 
or less folded upon itself, with inferior radicle, and 
large foliaceous bipartite cotyledons. Dombeya con- 
sists of shrubs or bushes of the warmest regions of 

Fia. 101, 
Fruit (2). 

moreover, inseparable from this genus, whose 
perianth it has, The two stamens of each pair 
gonal. In D. cannabina (Hoor., in Bot. Mag., 
t. 3619), the type of the genus Hilsenbergia, the 
are unequal, and have almost cordiform anthers. 
The ovary is two-celled, with one or two ovules 
in each cell, : 
1 In Astrapæa there are often five fertile 
stamens, the most exterior being the shortest, 
The tube which they form is cylindrical or penta- 
tube of the androceum is very long and very 
narrow. The pollen of Dombeyz is, according to H. 
Mout (in Ann. Se. Nat., sér. 2, iii. 334), formed 
of spherical grains covered with short spines, 
with three equatorial papillæ surrounded by a 
narrow halo, 
